News, Views and Analysis

This country is being run by crazy people

The winter solstice—the longest night of the year—approaches, and dark spirits are already abroad in the land.

Item: Revealing themselves once again to be the evil pondscum they are, Conservative senators have voted down a bill that would have provided a continuation of disability benefits for 400 disabled former Nortel workers. Their current benefits will run out around Christmastime. For some reason I find myself vividly imagining that perennially smug reprobate Mike Duffy chortling as he records his vote.

Item: The ever-unpredictable Rosie DiManno does Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair’s homework for him. The Ontario Special Investigations Unit (SIU) had thrown up its hands, claiming that officers involved in the brutal assault on a protester could not be identified. The Toronto police refused to cooperate with the SIU, and Blair issued a statement, later retracted under pressure, that a video of the event had been doctored.

Now Blair is claiming that five of the officers have indeed been identified—thanks, not to his own officers, who film all protests, but to the Toronto Star. But, deary me, he can’t do very much about it. His hands are tied. Once again, DiManno describes the incredible degree to which the system is biased in favour of police officers, no matter what unlawful violence they wreak upon ordinary citizens.

Item: The indefatigable Ezra Levant, currently shilling for the Alberta tar sands, is revealed as a sometime lobbyist for the tobacco industry as well. Tar, after all, is tar. And the lobby, whatever his part in it, was successful: the Conservatives have put the boots to a plan by Health Canada to improve the warning labels on cigarette packages.

Instead, they will focus on contraband cigarettes. Says former Conservative MP Perrin Beatty, now another Big Tobacco shill:

“There is a significant share of the market that it is being fuelled by organized crime. Do we want to make it easier for organized criminals by eliminating the ability of other people to offer brands in competition?”

Ponder the logic of that. Let it sink in. Warning people off ciggies because they cause heart disease, stroke and cancer, according to the Cons, is supporting organized crime.

Madness. Zombie politicians and crazed cops. It’s time to find an antidote for the T-virus.